Bone Builders

As we get older our bones lose density, making them more likely to fracture. Maintaining bone density relies on interactions between different cell types in our bones via the protein Notch. Researchers explore whether injecting adult mice with a protein that binds and activates Notch in bone cells — Dll4_(E12) — can increase bone formation. Male mice benefited from this treatment but, because they have less bone surface, females did not. However, when female mice were injected with Dll4_(E12) plus a hormone PTH used to treat women with brittle bone disease (osteoporosis) bone density was significantly improved, as revealed through micro-CT of their bones. Compared with untreated bones (far left), and bones treated with either Dll4_(E12) or PTH (middle two), females that received both had denser bone (far right). Bone-targeted proteins that activate Notch may therefore prove useful in treating osteoporosis and other conditions that reduce bone density.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Cong Xu and Van Vuong Dinh, and colleagues
• Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, Department of Tissue Morphogenesis, and University of Münster, Faculty of Medicine, Münster, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, February 2022